My Review of "Batman: The Dark Knight"

Batman: The Dark Knight came out back in 2008 and I still think this is possibly the best Batman movie I've ever seen. It adds so many elements seamlessly throughout the movie. Although the runtime of this movie is extremely long, it really doesn't feel like it. I was glued to my seat throughout the movie not realizing how much time had elapsed.

The movie starts off in epic fashion. There's a heist and each of the masked thieves are talking to each other about their employer named the Joker. This character was teased in the prior Batman film, Batman Begins. As the heist proceeds, with each step of their elaborate plan, we see each of the thieves double crossing each other.

They each kill each other in order to gain a bigger percentage of the final reward at the end. This will foreshadow a penultimate reveal later on in the movie. There are a ton of foreshadowing with minor details in dialogue or actions sprinkled throughout the movie like this. It is a very clever movie that never really lets up.

We then get introduced to a new character named Harvey Dent. He's Gotham's newest district attorney and he's cleaning house. Despite the vile vermin that he has to deal with he has no fear when asked to bring them to justice. Both Gordon and Batman believe he is the new savior of the city because he doesn't need a mask to bring hope to the people of Gotham.

That's not to say Batman hasn't been doing really well in cleaning up crime in the city. He's scared a lot of the big criminals and there's even vigilante copy cats out there. The biggest crime bosses have resorted to meeting up during the day because they're in fear of the Batman.

The Joker realizes this and wants to play a little game with everyone as you would expect in an old western cowboy movie. He draws everyone against one another and no one knows his angle. Earlier he had robbed those same mob bosses in the initial heist in the movie and now he's come back to help them get rid of the Batman.

Reluctantly the mob bosses agree to hire on the Joker because their organizations are bleeding money. That's basically when all hell breaks loose on Gotham city. The Joker goes absolutely crazy and starts killing everyone and in particular focuses on higher ranked individuals in the Gotham justice system. All this to draw out the Batman.

Never had Batman or Gordon experienced such a formidable foe. It becomes a cat and mouse game where the Batman will outwit the Joker but then they flip it right back around. All of a sudden you think Joker already knew what was going to happen and it was all part of his plan. This really becomes a game of chess after a while and as the audience we're salivating at the next reveal.

They bring up a lot of interesting concepts throughout this movie. We start to question our motivations in life and what truly makes us who we are. All of the characters in this movie really reveal themselves. The movie really becomes self aware in this sense as well because they're all not safe from death. The whole concept of not knowing someone until they're truly at their end comes to play in this movie. We see people transform and we see who they really are because they're all at their last wits.

This movie also explores the length it should take to protect ourselves. How much is too much and what are the statute of limitations for security? With the Joker we see an extreme example of anarchy going on in the city. As such Batman is forced to go to extreme lengths of violating individual privacy and freedoms.

There's just so much that happens in this movie that this movie could be dissected differently after each viewing. The philosophical questions of morality and the motivations of the characters are all so intriguing. Despite having a huge run time you don't really have tons of time to ruminate about these things because something else is about to happen.

Compared this to the first movie and it's like night and day. The first movie was good but this movie was great! You still have some introduction to certain characters but they didn't have to spend tons of time on origin stories. They really get into the meat of the story right away rather than the first movie.

We also have a much more beautiful looking movie. It seems as though they had really upgraded the camera equipment for this movie over the last. There seems to be a much higher fidelity in video quality in this movie. The sound effects are very specific as well. There are times when the background music kind of overshadows the dialogue and I'm pretty thankful for subtitles in that case.

Overall, this is close enough to a perfect Batman movie as I can think of. The only issues were some of the background music overshadows the dialogue and the batman mask is really weird seeing how wide it is. Those are stupid nitpicks for what is otherwise a magnificent movie. I have to give this movie a 9.5 out of 10. I don't know how they could have made this movie any better.